Senate Defeats Electronic Record Access Plan

Senate Defeats Electronic Record Access Plan

Article excerpt

By Lou Anne Wolfe

Journal Record Staff Reporter

A bill to centralize state records for electronic access was
voted down 29-17 Wednesday in the Oklahoma Senate.

House Bill 1271 by Rep. Danny Williams, D-Seminole, and Sen.
Ben Robinson, D-Muskogee, would have created an Oklahoma
Information Network, governed by a commission and administered by
a private contractor.

Robinson lodged a reconsideration motion on his bill, which
means he has three days to bring it up for another vote.

Senators who debated against the bill said it would be too
easy to get information on citizens and use it for profit.
Robinson said the system only would contain information already
in the public domain. He said it would make it faster and easier
to access government information.

One group which would use the system would be insurance
agents, who obtain motor vehicle records for the people they
insure, he said.

Opponents also worried about individual privacy, and said it
would be a moneymaking enterprise for the network managing firm.

A nine-member Oklahoma Information Network Commission would
have overseen the operation. Members would have been the
secretary of state, state finance director, two state agency
heads appointed by the governor, one member of the Oklahoma Bar
Association and one librarian, appointed by the Oklahoma
Department of Libraries Board.

Robinson said the commission would control the cost of
accessing the information network "and make it accessible and
affordable to the public to use. The marketplace would control
`obscene' profits," he said. The commission would establish the
rates the contractor could charge, he said.

State government information in Kansas and New Mexico is on
this kind of system, Robinson said. Users are charged 40 or 50
cents per minute for a record search, and then the customary cost
of the record they request, he said.

Sen. Gene Stipe, D-McAlester, was a co-author of House Bill
1271 but he withdrew his name from the bill Wednesday.

"I signed on as a co-author because I thought we were doing
something to further education," he said. "This deal here,
though, is frightening to say the least."

The bill had its origin in a special committee that studied
access to "machine-readable" records prior to this year's
legislative session.

Sen. Jerry Pierce, R-Bartlesville, said not enough
consideration was given to citizens' privacy rights. …